Dweezil Zappa To Release First Solo Album In 10 Years

Nearly a year ago, Dweezil Zappa revealed that he was about to start work on a new solo album, which would mark his first time recording original music for a full-length LP in ten years. Today, Dweezil has announced Via Zammata will hit stores and online retailers November 27 via Fantom Records.

Dweezil produced, wrote and arranged all the material on Via Zammata’, which features a few special collaborations that include a song with venerable actor John Malkovich and the only song the guitarist co-wrote with his father Frank Zappa.

“This whole record is about finding my own voice in the world of music,” said Dweezil. “I decided to collect songs I had written from the past that I felt had strong bones and build new arrangements around them. I also wanted to write new material that would reflect my current musical state of mind. I’ve learned so much in the past 10 years of playing my father’s music. I wanted to be able to express new compositional, arranging and playing skills with my own new musical vocabulary.”

The studio version of the song Dweezil wrote with Frank, “Dragon Master,” premiered at Rolling Stone today. Frank wrote the lyrics in 1988 and asked Dweezil to set it to music. “At that time, heavy metal was topping the charts and my dad was lampooning the genre with his lyrics. For this record, I decided to fully embrace the epic metal-osity of his lyrics and create a deadly serious face melting riff to back them up.” Listen:

Here’s a list of the musicians featured on the album:

• Dweezil Zappa: Vocals, all guitars
• Kurt Morgan: Bass<
• Ryan Brown: Drums, percussion
• Scheila Gonzalez: Saxophone, flute
• Chris Norton: Keyboards
• Ben Thomas: Background vocals
• Shawn Albro: All vocals on “Dragon Master”
• John Malkovich: Lead vocal on “Malkovich”